


Crouching Wind Hidden Moon

by Kirrifish



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, 臥虎藏龍 | Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Adaptation, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Arguing, Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Hair-pulling, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Mildly Dubious Consent, One Night Stand, Parody, Sesshoumaru doesn’t have the energy whip, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:47:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28710690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirrifish/pseuds/Kirrifish
Summary: “I felt a thousand currents, pulling me every which way. I would chase the winds, wondering where they went. I thought if I flew to the other end of those mountains, across those oceans, I’d fly far enough that Kanna’s mirror cannot reflect my image, that even Naraku forgets who I am.”“And that woman couldn’t fly far enough, so she stole my comb.”A very serious parody and adaptation of the desert sequence in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Relationships: Kagura/Sesshoumaru (InuYasha)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between Inuyasha manga chapters 351 and 364, and between anime original series and Final Act. Some manga scenes are missing and/or different in the anime adaptation.

The comb is compact and unassuming, save for the simple design that runs along its spine and the way its gilded edges amplify the brilliance of moonlight. Sesshoumaru has had it for as long as he can remember, given to him by his father long before he’s cared about anything worth a damn, affairs like inheritance, swords, ambition, power.

The carriage rattles in the gusty currents under the unforgiving midday sun, and with the bumps and jolts comes a stabbing, tearing sensation from his intestines. The serrated edges hemming the internal wounds in his abdomen are undoubtedly reopening deep within the tissues of his body, even as his kimono shimmers as immaculately white and red as ever. Willing the injuries shut requires far more vigor than he possesses at the moment, and there’s something in his body that isn’t coming together properly after withstanding a full-on impact from that giant human-eating centipede they encountered on a mountain passage. It wasn’t a particularly powerful creature, either, and with that kind of colossal, dim-witted bulk that drowned out the sun’s light, it should never have been able to graze a hair on his head — but for Rin’s sake, it did. In the five seconds Sesshoumaru took to sweep his human ward out of harm’s way — the danger radius stretched abnormally far due to the creature’s impossible size — he broke multiple ribs and over half of the bones in his right leg, and ruptured several organs throughout his body. In rebuttal, he took less than a second to disintegrate that blundering offal into mere particles, but the damage was done.

Naturally, none of the injuries are grievous enough that he can’t recover from them in a matter of days, perhaps a week, but the humiliation stings like a needle under his claws, stirs up an acrid taste in the back of his throat, makes him clench his teeth until his jaw grows stiff. Despicable filth. _It will be the last,_ he promises himself silently, his grip tightening on his comb. Another broken fragment of his armor sloughs off and tumbles to the floor of the carriage. “Are you flying this clumsily on purpose?” Jaken shouts to A-Un, his voice shrill and indignant, before turning back to his lord, fussing over him as he sweeps the gleaming comb through his hair dispassionately.

In the far corner of the carriage, Rin reclines against a makeshift pillow of tassel fern, her eyes closed in deep slumber despite the blistering sunlight, breaths pulling in and out of her at long intervals. Undoubtedly she is worn out from yet another narrow miss with peril, so narrow that the frail skin of her arms is beginning to discolor with purple blotches from where Sesshoumaru had grabbed and swung her out of danger, and he’s relieved that they aren’t anything closer to his own injuries. He’s going to have to figure out a more efficient way of shielding her from a land fraught with beasts that hunger for the taste of human flesh.

Admittedly, that mountain pass is known to be a particularly dangerous territory. Apart from the brief disturbance, they traversed it with enough haste that, ever since the sun reached its apex in the clear cerulean, they are well within the sloping valleys that span the other side of the crags, a land where the most threatening of beings fall easily to Jaken’s staff. Sesshoumaru is already thinking he will drop off Rin and the dragon in a secluded location before resuming his hunt for Naraku’s heart, using the demon aura crystals given to him by Kagura a while ago. Knowing Naraku’s track record of insipid and impressively repetitive plans, Sesshoumaru wouldn’t be surprised if the centipede attack turned out to be the spider half-demon’s doing. It certainly falls in line with his cowardly manner to ambush his traveling companions rather than to face him head-on.

A scent comes to him, then, a secret he vehemently longs to hear; it stinks up the air in a way only Naraku can. Sesshoumaru sits up, favoring his right side, and pushes open the drapes that line the window of the carriage. There, in the distance — a large feather floats whimsically, almost lazily in the breeze, bearing none other than Kagura. Her look of uneasy contemplation ill befits the aimless way she drifts, buffeted by the capricious ebb and flow of wind currents.

Yet, her presence in this region is no accident. A land that teems with weak demons and negligible spiritual energy has little value for someone like Naraku and his incarnations, and the mountain range takes effort to scale, even for those capable of flight. For a moment, Sesshoumaru considers whether she has new information for him regarding Naraku’s heart, or additional trails to follow. Even if she isn’t privy to most of the spider half-demon’s schemes, there’s no doubt that she knows more than an outsider.

Just as easily as he notices her presence, she notices his; it’s hard not to, with the two-headed dragon drawing the caravan across the muggy skies and him making no effort to conceal himself behind the curtains. Her eyes flash in his direction, brilliant crimson connecting with smoky amber through the open window, and she billows closer, incrementally — or is it merely the wind that’s pushing her to him? Expression wiped clean of wondering rumination, she glides alongside the flying vehicle, keeping pace with it effortlessly. Her stare pierces him with an intensity that bores into his skin and almost seems to reemerge on the other side of him, an intensity he returns without reservation — before she winks and jerks the comb from his fingers.

Jaken’s cry of protest goes unheard as Sesshoumaru wastes not a second leaping from the carriage. In the time it takes him to steady himself on his mass of fur in the boundless sky, with the hot sun beating down upon him between tufts of clouds, she’s already covered considerable air space on her feather, sending a strong gale blowing in her wake. He sees her, smells her, trains on her like a hawk to its quarry, spiraling streaks of fur as he gives chase.

“Come get your comb!” she taunts.

He lowers his head, tucks his lone arm, and charges, ignoring the pain that thrums like iron mallets striking the pit of his intestines. As if it isn’t ridiculous enough that the low-grade mountain centipede left him in this state, but now Kagura — cheeky red-lipped smile and all — has reduced him to such infantile antics. In a single unbroken motion, he sweeps his arm forward, seizes the tail end of her feather, and tears it loose, scattering hundreds, thousands of fibers into the sun-soaked winds and causing her to spiral dangerously toward the earth. As she dips past him, unperturbed as she steers into her wild descent, he catches the way her lips quirk upward, her eyes brim with a wicked fire.

The two of them dive and flit through the air, whirling, spinning downwards, sparring with deadly slashes of wind and claws that don’t connect: a wild dance under the rapidly-shifting clouds, with her above him, and then beneath him, and then above him again. Even as he tries to focus somewhat — he can see her perfectly well, smell her perfectly well, yet his claws catch nothing but hollow space and shredded remnants of laughter — the world tilts, turning head over heels.

The ground approaches at too far of an angle for him to place his feet in time; he lands unceremoniously, almost rolling over himself like a common brute before he comes to a shuddering stop in the grit and dirt that feels packed with rocks as sharp as diamonds. He stifles a frustrated snarl before it can leap from his throat — clenches his fist and rams it into the ground violently, blowing a sizable chunk out of the earth. Dirt and foliage spray like raindrops around him.

“Go back to your group!” Kagura’s voice sounds out; it comes to him from a distance, and drags farther with every passing moment.

As unamusing as the joke is, it’s over.

Gritting his teeth, Sesshoumaru resists drawing Toukijin — _it’s a privilege she doesn’t deserve_ — pulls himself to his feet, and springs after her, ignoring the dangerous cramp of nerves that have begun rippling with something deeper than simple corporeal pain.

When Kagura sees him approaching, she simply laughs, like she doesn’t expect anything less from him. “Come and get it!” she crows, even as her breath begins to run short, an unraveling spool that scatters trails of yarn across the patchy forest floor.

Sesshoumaru’s voice is level by comparison, despite the trees pitching dangerously around him and his right leg threatening to flounder. “Give me back my comb.”

He’s gaining on her. Judging from the wild mirth in her crimson eyes, it’s exactly what she wants.

“Let’s stop for a moment!” she shouts, waving her hand as she continues sprinting, her bare feet kicking up clouds of dirt and debris.

“Give it back.”

“You’re tired! You need rest.” Kagura leads him up the steep slope of a narrow gorge, then drops some thirty feet down to a riverbed. “There’s a creek up here,” she calls. When Sesshoumaru catches up and sees nothing but a canvas of parched earth, he turns in time to catch the insolent grin that splits her face. “Well, there used to be!”

Inconsequential. He’s already known from the scent that the river is dry, and has been for some time. He pins her with a withering look, but all she does is reach into her kimono layers and pull a flask from a side pocket, holding it out to him with a bearing that comes infuriatingly close to pity. He takes a second to look at it before kicking her square in the chest. “Give me back my comb!” he snarls.

She catches his lone hand with both of hers and narrowly avoids the spray of poison that dissolves a patch of shrubbery just over her right shoulder. They wrestle back and forth across the loosely packed soil, elbows in faces, fists against throats. His wounds are deepening — he can feel all manner of forest detritus grating against his broken leg, tree roots digging into his back, sediment gathering in his empty sleeve, something sharp in his chest straining against his diaphragm and making it difficult to breathe. He draws back his arm and slashes wildly, but can instantly tell it doesn’t connect.

The thin clouds overhead have drawn apart in earnest, exposing the sweltering sunlight in full. A suffocating, muggy heat engulfs them, and through the fury of battle, Sesshoumaru clearly discerns heat waves surging up from the cracked ground. He stands, and has barely realized that his right leg is having trouble supporting his weight when a nimble foot kicks his ankle out from underneath him. He responds with a vicious swipe that, at last, hits its target; he hears the telltale sizzle and corrosion of flesh, and Kagura’s gasp of pain — the pungent smell of his own toxins mixes harshly with the smell of Naraku, and his vision saturates with forest green and the dark mahogany of wood, with a blackening edge that closes in from the outside.

When the blackness eventually pools together and meets in the middle, he knows no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Sesshoumaru wakes with a start to a stream of water dribbling through his pinched lips. Nearly choking on it, he spits the stale liquid back out before it can finish trickling down his throat.

His eyes open to hard stone and petrified cascades of rock formations reflecting the glow of candlelight, a growth of dusky green moss blanketing the rough ground on which he reclines. Judging by the deep, almost purplish light that spills into the enclosed space, the day has crossed into twilight and is well on its way into the night.

He tries to sit up and realizes he is bound, his wrist strung loosely to a hook bolted into the wall behind him, his ankles fettered with coarse rope. Kagura’s voice, close by his shoulder — too close — grounds him sharply in his predicament, and makes him bare his teeth by instinct. “You’ve got quite a temper,” she informs him smoothly, and the reverberating quality of her voice, alongside the damp, earthy smell with a pervasive undertone of minerals and mildew, suggests that they’re in a cavern. “It’s better this way.”

Sesshoumaru responds with a furious spray of poison that she only narrowly dodges; the ground sputters and sizzles, and the temperature between them tangibly rises. He smells it on her, that prickling odor radiating from her fabricated flesh like serpentine ribbons. Fear. “If you are afraid, then don’t pretend to be a savior,” he snarls, pulling tight against the cord around his wrist, his words barely audible over the heavy growl that emerges from deep within his throat.

Regardless, Kagura draws near again, whistling low through her teeth. “Scrappy, aren’t you, even in a state like that. No wonder I had no idea you were injured. Not until you blacked out on me.” She stops just out of range of his claws, frustratingly close, but far enough to evade a sudden swipe or burst of poison. “With that carefree way you’re moving around, you’re gonna split those wounds wide open again,” she remarks, as though commenting on the weather, but it’s evident to him, unmistakable as the scent of animal blood clinging to the air, that she’s feigning composure through a shifting knot of disquiet. He needs little more than a single swing of his arm and the hungry blade of Toukijin to dispatch her — but  _ how _ she knows he has no inclination to do so, he’ll have to contemplate later. His senses are preoccupied with seeking solutions for his vital needs — his mind spinning with a medley of heat exhaustion, hunger, and crippling injury, the inside of his mouth parched like that dry riverbed, whose banks provided an unlikely backdrop for their ludicrous tussle.

How much time has passed since then? The poison he slashed her with has long flushed from her body; she smells intact, whole, healthy. He sits up with the cavern wall at his back, and the familiar pain hits him like something taking hold of his organs and wringing them like a washcloth. Even if his ankles weren’t bound, he suspects his right leg is nigh useless — the bones have yet to fuse back together and are certainly in no better shape after chasing her through the damned forest. He holds back a grimace, cushioning his aching body against his fur.

Sesshoumaru isn’t accustomed to falling unconscious, and it makes his blood boil to think that a trifling mountain centipede and a coquettish prank staged by Kagura are enough to render him in this unseemly situation. By his estimation, not a full day has passed with him shackled inside this cavern, but it’s been much longer since he’s last eaten, so wholly invested he’s been in tracking Naraku’s heart using those crystals she’d given him.

She’s taken advantage of his shift in attention to retreat into the darkness where the candlelight doesn’t touch, gathering something from a cavity in the rock, and when she straightens and faces him again, his eyes fall instinctively to the bundle grasped in her hands; it’s the source of the animal blood scent, and it smells divine, raw. Wordlessly, she holds it out to him — freshly-slaughtered fowl — and though he doesn’t react with so much as a twitch of muscle, she must recognize the feral hunger in his eyes, because she lowers the meat to the ground in front of him. Gradually, as she steps back into the unlit space, he takes it and begins to eat.

Once he starts, he can’t stop, tearing into the flesh with a ferocity that he would normally be loath to display in the presence of anyone — much less someone like her — but, if only for the moment, he’s beyond caring about such meaningless things.

Another movement stirs in his peripheral vision; she’s placed an earthen jug within arm’s reach, and after sniffing it — unadulterated warm milk collected from the udder of a she-goat — he takes it and drinks. “You need to eat,” she tells him seriously, “that way you’ll have more strength to keep fighting.”

He glares at her, but all she says in response is, “You’re eating too fast.  _ Slowly. _ ”

It doesn’t take him more than a couple minutes to completely drain the jug and demolish the fowl — bones, cartilage, organs, skin, and everything in between — but she’s gone by the time he looks up again.

Her scent hangs in the air, intense and heavy and impossible to ignore. From what Sesshoumaru can make out of a series of paths weaving through the dim light, he surmises that she’s rounded a ridge of stone formations that jut out from deeper in the cavern. And now that he can smell more lucidly past his sated thirst and hunger, he readily parses the baseline scents of his surroundings — steam, minerals, rocks polished with a seething heat that bubbles up from aquatic depths. Mingling quietly with them are touches of mellow grass, blinking fireflies, sunbaked rock that turns cool in moonlight. Moonlight that filters into the cavern in pale layers, tantalizing him with freedom.

Lifting his wrist, Sesshoumaru examines the cord that leashes him to the wall; it’s a pliable, slender rope that yields when he tugs on it, like an elongated piece of sinew. In contrast, the cord wrapped around his ankles is stiff and rigid, and straining even a little against it makes his right leg erupt in spasms. He turns his attention back to the sinewy rope on his wrist and fires a burst of poison along its length, to little effect. Taking a strand of it between his claws, he jerks it up and across the air with a violent slash; it slaps back against him, defiant and unscathed.

Riding on its afterimages is a flash of that barefaced wink, that cheeky smile outside the carriage. That insolent grin on the barren riverbank. His ears echo with the sound of her animated laughter as he dipped and sailed through the skies after her, as he sprinted through the forest after her — that target he couldn’t hit.

Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to.

_ Ridiculous. _

Despite restraining his limbs, she left his swords untouched on his obi, and while it certainly means something significant, Sesshoumaru doesn’t have the patience to spare idle thought on it. Steeling himself against a prolonged wrench of agony, he draws Toukijin and wedges its blade against the wiry cord. A fleeting breath — then he sends a pulse of measured energy snaking down the sword that culminates in a burst of raw power, blasting rope and rock with deadly sparks that promptly rebound as if the cavern itself were made of mirrors. At such close range, even he can barely dodge all of them in time, and the singing of the blade reverberates loudly off the walls as he uses it to shield against what he can’t avoid, between his injuries and fettered ankles. When the air finally clears, he rolls onto his side and examines his wrist: the rope holds fast, crackling slightly but otherwise unmarked.

He sheathes Toukijin.

It’ll take him mere seconds to shapeshift and lay waste to this entire subterranean expanse, and for the greater part of the next quarter-hour, he’s tempted. But what little remains of his energy is better spent on recuperating.

It’s the overbearing smell before anything else, followed quickly by the muted pattering of bare feet on rock. The instant Kagura enters his line of sight again, he cocks his hand, poison oozing from his claws. She surveys him through narrowed eyes, slender hands loose at her sides. “You’ve got a bad temper,” she reiterates, and only then does he realize her tone is completely devoid of mockery. It’s warm — borderline sympathetic. He can’t decide which is worse. “Wanna take a bath?”

He says nothing.

“I’m sure you’ve smelled it by now,” she continues, eyes glittering vermilion in the dim light. “This place is an _ insane _ trove of mineral springs. There’s one right over there, in fact,” she nods in the direction of the ridged structures he noted earlier. “You can take a dip if you want. Wash some of that dirt out of your hair. I have some spare clothes from the last hamlet I pillaged. Hell, some of it looks good enough for nobility.”

As if he will stoop to wearing whatever rags she’s scrounged. The only answer he has is a glare that has sent creatures far more impressive than her running for the hills.

She doesn’t so much as flinch, appraising him with slightly pursed lips instead, like she’s deciding whether or not he’s worth the trouble. Then the tight muscles of her face relax into an ironic twist of the corners of her mouth; it doesn’t quite reach the fullness of a smile. “Don’t think I’m gonna quite untie you. Can’t let you hurt yourself with those wounds any further. I’ll stay upwind so you know where I am. I won’t look — promise.”

And before he decides to counter or, strangely, resist at all — she’s leashed a longer cord to his wrist with a dexterous flick of her arm, undulating the rope until it stretches long enough to coil in a bundle against the floor. With a snap and a burst of light, the original rope strung around his wrist has unraveled and fallen away under her hands. She reaches down for his feet, then, her movements slow and deliberate — as if moving too quickly will make him strike, like some kind of venomous snake — and looses the bindings around his ankles, another faint light sparking from between her fingers as she works through the knots. Her work finished, she bounds back, landing lightly on the soles of her feet, and casts a look over her shoulder at him before pacing down the path and vanishing into the shadows.

He’s not sure how much time passes, nor does he particularly care, but the lighting in the cavern begins to shift as the row of candles placed along the far wall burns into the nebulous hours of the night. Eventually Sesshoumaru pushes himself to his feet, kicks away the coarse rope, and, in fits and starts, makes his way to the jagged rock structures that form a hollow of steaming water. Up close, he can make out the pure, clean smells of a multitude of minerals underneath the much more potent smell of sulfur characteristic of such springs. The water looks deep enough to submerge him to the mid-torso, but not so deep that he would be swimming in it.

The therapeutic properties of mineral springs are known to be effective for most living beings, be they human or demon, and Sesshoumaru’s not about to let his pride prevent him from granting his injured body a healing soak, even if it isn’t something he would do under any other circumstance. Gingerly, he unfastens what remains of his armor, divests himself of his clothing, and steps into the spring. His kimono and undergarments hang off the rope as if it were a clothesline, and he angles his arm so that they slide neatly to the rocky floor.

The waters accept him unequivocally, and his body submits to them in turn — every muscle, every joint unraveling like sprung coils that have stayed locked for far too long, and he sinks into the heat with a nearly imperceptible sigh, his hair pooling in long sheets around him.

Cradled in an abundance of scents that saturate his nasal passages, he washes his face, scrubs his body, and rinses muck from his hair, then reaches over the edge of the brimming pit and plunges his soiled clothing into the water, carefully working out the grit from the silk. The soft gleam of white and red returns slowly, and he wrings the water from the garments as best as he can. With the warmth in the cavern, it will not take them long to dry.

As much as he wouldn’t care to admit it, he finds his mood softening ever so slightly, the sharpest edges of his irritation and indignity sanding away and evaporating with the curling steam.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for sexual content.

As promised, Kagura doesn’t return to him until long after he’s sat down with his back flush against the glittering wall adjacent to the spring, his swords and cracked armor left in a pile, his legs in front of him, curled slightly against the throbbing that has settled into a dull ache in his abdomen. With a flourish of her sleeves, she seats herself facing him some ten paces away. Her eyes are like red-hot coals in a dying fire, and they pass over his damp clothes without comment. “All this trouble for a comb?”

“It’s mine.” His lips barely part to squeeze out the words. He looks pointedly away from her, eyes averted towards the murkiness of the cavern depths. “It means a lot to me. Someone like you would not understand.”

“Not true. I can use it to pick burrs from between my toes.” She watches him with an unflinching stare, tongue between her lips, gauging for a reaction. He grants her no such satisfaction. “You know, I own many hair accessories myself,” she continues blithely, with a sharp turn of her head that brings out the gleam of pins tucked snugly away in her hair. “I even have a collection of antique combs. Want one?”

He considers not responding at all, but eventually settles for a dismissive scoff. “Ridiculous.”

A heavy silence descends, in an unfinished, unanswered way marked by a restless curdling of the air. All the while she continues to watch him unblinkingly, until, growing impatient, Sesshoumaru turns from surveying the hollow darkness and reciprocates her gaze.

She cocks her head, but it’s a long moment before she speaks again. “It’s not like you to pass out.”

“It’s not like you to bind me,” he answers.

Her brisk scoff punctures the strange heaviness that has started to gather between them. “If I didn’t bind you, you’d be in a sorrier state! Who asked you to strain yourself to that extent. And over a _comb_ of all things.” Her expression cycles rapidly through a host of sentiments, hilarity and unease and bewilderment, and there’s that abhorrent pitying look again — “During a simple bout of play-fighting.”

“Play-fighting?” Sesshoumaru repeats, and even if she hears the warning that pulses through his voice, she doesn’t shrink back. “I take it you also regard it as play-fighting to tether me like a common beast?”

“So you think I’m getting a kick out of this, do you?” she snaps, her features coloring with irritation. “I brought you here for the mineral-infused air and curative springs. I restrained you because you would’ve gone flying off again before you can barely even take a step, don’t even _try_ to deny it. That rope,” she indicates with a jerk of her head, “it’s made from the intestines of a shitload of demons — reflects demonic energy once fastened, and sends it back in full force. But just like everything else, there’s a limit to how much it can take — as soon as you’ve regained enough energy, it’ll snap like any raggedy string. There’s nothing keeping you here except for your own recovery.”

For something of such trifling merit, that is the reason he couldn’t get it off himself — while _she_ could? The indignity of it is unbearable, and makes him more irritated than he wishes to be at the moment. “Your concern is unflattering and unwanted,” he bites out as he turns away again, damp tresses flying over his shoulder.

Her next question resounds incisively from behind him. “What exactly did you tangle with?”

“What gives you the impression I fought something?”

“Well you can’t have tripped and ended up like that,” she retorts, sarcasm dripping viscously from her voice. “Something — or someone, must’ve done that to you.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Whatever it was,” she continues, “it’s left a little memento in your skin.”

A tense, stunned silence. Then his hand instinctively comes up, feeling blindly the expanse of skin across his face, his neck. His eyes dart to his hand, his arm, catching inescapably on that damned cord that’s a testament to his weakness —

“The back of your neck, just under the hairline.” Her voice is fast approaching, along with her potpourri scent of demon appendages and entrails macerated into an indiscernible sludge, and Sesshoumaru catches a glimpse of her arm, halfway raising from her side as she bears down upon him. “If you’ll stop moving for a second — ”

His hand clamps down hard against the back of his neck and he pulls away, facing her with unsheathed fangs. “Do you think I would accept help from the likes of you?”

She halts, clearly stung, but the shadow that clings to her features is quickly overridden by exasperation. “So you’ll pluck it out by yourself, then, _macho man_? You can’t even see it!”

He doesn’t answer, fingers skating along his nape and sifting through cascades of silky hair until they close around something stiff and hard protruding from his skin. As he gives a harsh tug, the base of his neck flares with a barbed pain that jolts like an electric shock through his body and makes his eyes spring wide, and in that instant he realizes what the object is: the toxin-tipped end of a centipede pincer, splintered off into his flesh.

He thinks about how his body seems to be recuperating sluggishly, like a festering wound that slits back open every time it closes — how something inside him seems to be misaligning like shattered fragments drawing back together without design, and another thought cracks him over the head, like the boom of a sudden thunderclap: that centipede was a demon-hunting centipede, and it had been targeting him, not Rin. She’d merely been a hapless bystander caught in the proceedings.

He can’t fathom why the feeble toxins of any lowly centipede can affect him to this extent, and why they haven’t corroded away under his own toxins, but Kagura is right next to him now, her slight frame standing straight-backed and serious, her visage cast in patches of darkness with the flickering candlelight behind her.

“Yo.”

His eyes fly to her, his hand still clasped around the nib of the pincer embedded in his neck.

“I can help you get it out.”

He scoffs, a guttural, harsh sound that echoes off the walls and she actually draws back, her eyes turning wary. “I don’t need you taking unnecessary actions.” He pinches the affronting appendage between his claws and pulls again, this time with far less patience and far more vehemence, and this time the agony sucks a fast breath into his lungs and strains his voice against his teeth, the tensile rope on his wrist reflecting a flare of demonic energy that isn’t entirely voluntary.

And now, more than any other ridiculous event that’s occurred in the past few hours, he’s truly confused — unnerved, even, because he can’t recall the last time he’s lost control of his own demonic energy. That is the sort of disgraceful accident that befalls those whose demon heritage is diluted with lesser blood — not full-bloods and especially not full-blooded descendants of powerful bloodlines. He doesn’t understand.

“I said I can help you get it out, goddammit!”

Her eyebrows are drawn tight, her lips firm, resolute, and she looks into his eyes with a directness that belies the needles of fear dashing off her body in forceful ripples. She stands close, so close that she could hardly take half a step back if he were to strike at her, could hardly reach for her fan before he melts her under his claws. Her body holds still and her feet plant against the rocky earth, tensed yet prepared for an attack that she knows she has no defense against — and although her flesh would simply re-form, Sesshoumaru realizes that her entire existence has been characterized by this uncertainty, the precarious decision of her life or death grasped firmly in someone else’s hand. That no matter what she does or where she goes, Naraku could easily squash out her life like a bug between his devious fingers.

He draws in a measured breath, watching her all the while. “Do it, then,” he says in a voice of deadly calm.

Shock crosses her features, but it passes quickly, her jaw tightening with a surge of determination. “You’ll have to turn around.”

He refuses at first, but she says nothing else. When he finally does acquiesce, dragging his legs in a semicircle around himself, it’s another long moment before he breaks eye contact and looks ahead towards the wall.

A slender hand brushes against his head, carding long strands of his hair out of the way. “Tilt your head down,” she says in a voice that borders on gentle, her cool breath grazing his ear, “and hold still.”

“As if I would take orders from the likes of you,” is his dismissive response, but Sesshoumaru finds himself looking down at the claws he holds loosely in his lap, silver tresses falling over his shoulder, his head attentively still as her fingers move lightly across the exposed skin of his neck. Then, a metallic _click_ as her nails hook around the tip of the pincer, followed by a silence as she leans in to assess the damage, rhythmic breaths landing like butterfly wings against the back of his neck.

“It’s in there pretty deep,” she cautions. “This will hurt.”

“Something to this extent does not hurt at all,” he answers in a forced monotone. “Get it out.”

Maybe she gives a curt nod, maybe her expression hardens with assurance following his permission, barefaced and uncloaked. He can’t quite tell from the intriguing smells that emanate from her body, which hovers so close over him he’s certain he would be able to sense her body heat, if she had any. She begins to pull with a measured strength that makes the stinging pain radiate like hungry flames around the puncture site, but it’s steady enough for him to counter his demonic energy that churns and foams in response to the prickling sensations. The segment lodged in his neck seems tipped with radial hooks, because he can feel it latching into his flesh, refusing to submit to the force that pulls on it.

Kagura gives it the tiniest of shakes, then he feels a rush of cool air against his skin, and it quenches the flames for a second before they return in an angry blaze — another gust counters them, pushing from a different direction, followed immediately by a strong suction. She’s directing concentrated blasts of air against the appendage, calculated pushes and pulls, so precise that his hair hardly moves from the force of them. It’s a little difficult to tell through the spasms of white-hot pain erupting through his body, but the thistly object seems to be coming out, bit by bit.

His breath catches in his throat, just for a second, when he thinks of how effortlessly she could slice apart the blood vessels in his neck, or sever his spinal cord — he knows her proficiency at transforming air into blades that rend and cut as efficiently as a sword. A simple twitch of the wrist; that’s all it would take. Sesshoumaru stares down at his hand and the rope that binds it, not really seeing either, focusing instead on the slight pressure of her against his back, and her breathing that has become increasingly erratic, until, with a final jolt and a shared exhalation, the last of the pincer leaves his skin and clatters onto the hard ground beside them. He turns and destroys it with an offhand slash of his claws.

“Hmph. Vermin.”

Kagura’s settled back onto her haunches, looking spent. “Stubborn piece of shit. Pretty fond of sticking to you, that’s for sure.” With a flourish, she snaps her fan closed and slides it back into her kimono. “Whatever, that was good for me too. Now I’ve repaid my debt.” She meets his eyes, and anticipates his question before he voices it. “For pulling me out of the river.”

“Is that what this is about?” Sesshoumaru asks, not bothering to keep the irritation from his voice. It’s long been evident to him that she has a tendency of taking superfluous actions on his behalf: offering him things he doesn’t want; trying to help him when he doesn’t need it; and now, paying him back for acts she’s misconstrued as kindness. That time, if it weren’t for Rin and Jaken, he wouldn’t have bothered to cast a second glance at her mangled form washing away in the swift currents. It wasn’t like her life was in any more jeopardy than it usually is. Not until Naraku decided differently. But he has a suspicion she’s already well aware.

“If that’s what you want to believe, then sure,” she scoffs.

The silence pours in between them again, painting the walls with broad strokes. The pain is already ebbing away in his body, leaving a sour aftertaste and a heavy, tired soreness. He leans back into his fur and draws in a long breath, feeling it brush across the damp fibers as he exhales. Such a troublesome, insidiously destructive venom that hampers his body’s healing capabilities and causes his demonic energy to slip from his control, even if just for an instant. Few beings across the land are capable of a mere fraction of this.

Kagura’s the one to break the silence, voicing what the two of them already know. “Naraku sent that centipede after you.”

“Of course he did.” He doesn’t ask her how she knows. He already had an inkling she was involved in some way, whether to oversee the assault or to abduct Rin while he was preoccupied with the nuisance. There is little other rationale for her presence in these lands. A part of him must have known from the start, however subconsciously, and it’s part of the reasons that drove him to leap from the carriage. “How characteristically absurd of him. To presume that the likes of a mere centipede could challenge me.”

“Well, it didn’t give you an easy time, I can see that much,” she retorts, and he knows he can’t argue with that. She ponders for a moment before adding, in a voice utterly free of pretense, “I was hoping you hadn’t come across it at all. ...I thought that to be the case at first.”

Sesshoumaru’s starting to get the impression that she’s a couple words away from apologizing, and for some reason, it puts him on edge. “Only a short-sighted fool would stumble and stew over past events,” he grunts.

He shifts, then, and the kimono that clings damp and loose around his shoulders eases open. Kagura’s eyes pass over the ragged contusions that, he’s aware, crawl all the way across his torso and discolor his skin with a sickly puce. She doesn’t say anything for some time, just studies him with a frown set across her lips.

“Pincer or not, that’s a nasty injury. I was sure you’d be at least somewhat recovered by now. At the end of the day, that thing messed you up pretty bad.”

“I did not engage it in earnest,” he answers brusquely.

“No.” Something crosses into her face that he can’t quite read, like a light that glows without source in the penetrating dark, and her features soften. “You were distracted, because you were protecting someone, weren’t you? You spared practically no thought for yourself.” Then quietly, as if affirming to herself, “I guess even someone like you has a heart, after all.”

“Give me back my comb,” he says sharply.

There’s no reaction at first. Then she leans toward him, her eyes brimming with candlelight and an intensity that goes beyond a simple prank. The corners of her lips quirk slightly, and she wields his own words like salt over his injuries. “ _‘As if I would take orders from the likes of you.’_ ”

Sesshoumaru cocks his hand, claws glistening. “Give it to me.”

When she does nothing, those fiery eyes boring into his, he drives his claws into her chest. Her eyes widen — whether with pain in its rawest form, or shock that he’d followed through on his threat, or confusion that he’d struck without the intent to maim, his claws free of poison, he will never find out. She stares at him with those wide eyes, never breaking eye contact; then, in a single motion, takes his hand and wrenches it out of herself with a sickening squelch. Her kimono layers cleave asunder, her bare flesh splits open, but immediately knits itself back together.

With a guttural yell, Kagura launches herself at him and brings him to the ground.

They’re wrestling again, this time against the rough surface of the cave floor, and this time there’s less adrenaline to keep him from noticing the wounds actively slowing his movements. He has limited range of motion on his right side, and turning into it feels like pulling on tanned hide stretched taut from drying in the sun. She seems to notice, and exploits it without mercy, wrenching his arm behind him as she holds him against the ground, and there’s no trace of laughter from her now, only harsh grunts reminiscent of battle. With a sharp breath, he twists into the pain, seizes her by the wrists, and forces her onto her back, his hair pooling all around her, cascading onto her face. He catches a glimpse of her eyes, red-hot and feverish, before she uses the momentum to flip him again, crushing him with an elbow to the throat — he rolls, throws her off easily.

But as hard as she struggles against him, and as hard as he struggles against her, neither of them inflict grievous injury on the other: a wild dance in the moisture-soaked air of the cavern, with her above him, and then beneath him, and then above him again. At such close quarters, he will have no trouble cutting her to ribbons; it wouldn’t take much, he thinks, as he watches torn pieces of flesh slough off her manufactured body and splatter across the ground. Just a little more pressure. Just a faster snap of his muscles, and she won’t be able to regenerate so quickly. Maybe she just needs to give him one reason to do it — one reason to end this, and take back what she stole from him.

But maybe no reason will ever be enough.

The space between them grows humid — it’s that damned mineral spring, he thinks, glaring into eyes so close to his own, pushing against a forehead that refuses to yield a finger’s breadth. Without his armor, the presence of her body presses into his, and the frenzied effort of their struggling movements causes unduly friction, enticing a deep need within him — or is it merely unmasking it?

Play-fighting, she called it earlier. Certainly not the phrase he would use for their encounter in the skies, and not the phrase he would use now. It’s not the phrase for his hand finding an unintentional grip around her breast, long slipped free from the ripped cloth, with her leaning forcefully on him, and it’s not the phrase for her roving hand closing around him through fabric, precisely where he needs it — because he can tell how long he’s wanted this from how hastily he draws his next breath. Her hand tightens, and her mouth connects with his, erratic breaths swallowed into the heavy atmosphere between them. Amidst a grappling pressure and the slippery heat of tongues, they struggle desperately, yearning for the upper hand, for control that slips back and forth like the vacillating swing of a pendulum.

He’s not sure which of them pulls away first — when they do, there’s a rush of cool air that breaks the string of saliva coiling between them. Her face is awash with more emotions than he can read, but at the forefront of it all is a hard, brazen look he cannot deny, eyebrows tight, a hunger deep within her blood-red eyes. It's a wild hunger, one that craves release and makes her grind down on his thighs, but as her kneading fingers slow their rhythm around him, he can see her silently asking, verifying. A warranted concern, he supposes, and he hasn’t taken the time to ponder it on his own terms — all he knows is that if he wanted her to stop, he would’ve made her stop the moment she laid her hands on him.

Bracing his uninjured leg against the cavern floor, he kicks, hard — rolling her beneath him, palming her breast and flicking the pink nub that stands erect beneath his clawed fingertips, feeling her gasping breath against his cheek before their mouths have joined once more, teeth against teeth, tongue against tongue.

He’s never going to caress her face, or hold her hand, but she doesn’t need any of that,

and neither does he. They’re a mess of limbs, entangled fabric, and heat that builds from the insufferable friction between their bodies. She bucks against him, and they roll again as a single entity; she’s on top now, holding him closely, refusing to surrender her leverage. He moves to counter her, but his arm abruptly catches —

He twists, and sees that the sinewy cord on his wrist has locked around a tapered rock forming one end of the spring he’d bathed in — he had wound it inadvertently when he’d exited the spring on a different side from where he’d entered it, so that the rope snags against the rock — and with that last somersault it now stretches tight, trapping his arm above his head. He pulls hard enough to make a deep shock of pain flare through his muscles, but the cord holds soundly, so soundly it may as well have been fashioned from the same reinforced material that comprises Naraku’s new physical form. Curse that lowlife half-demon, he thinks irritably, curse everything he brought forth.

Slender fingers clutch him tightly, breathlessly, tugging against fabric, undoing the layers of damp silk and laying him bare in the stifling humidity. She plants a blistering trail of saliva and hard bites down his neck, and there it is, her hand wrapped around him again, and it’s as shockingly slippery as the tongue that swipes along his collarbone — this time without anything to separate them, without anything to temper his throbbing heat as her thumb slides over the tip. He grows undeniably slick under the rhythm she sets, rough and relentless, his hips bucking into her hand until the mounting heat in his abdomen threatens to spill forth and drain him of the energy he’s started to regain — but then her fingers come to a sudden stop, lingering around the head and clamping tightly, almost painfully, her voice low and harsh in his ear. “You’re a bit early, I think.”

Sesshoumaru growls, aware of the palpable huskiness of his voice and his floundering ability to contain it. He gives the rope a sharp jerk, and feels the pressure yield ever so slightly. “You have no shame...taking advantage of someone in such a manner when they’re injured.”

“Oh please, that’s all on you. You trapped yourself against that rock. I merely saw a loose string, and... _pulled_.”

Through a sibilant whisper that drags across the last word, Kagura reaches up and yanks on the cord, looping and interweaving knots about his wrist until, even with the elasticity of the threads, his arm stretches straight and stiff above him, a coldness seeping into his grappling hand, followed steadily by a paralyzing numbness.

It’s almost amusing, he thinks, as he watches her sit back on his thighs with a smug expression on her face, because none of it prevents him from launching a counterattack; he brings his legs up swiftly, catching his knees against her body and throwing her flush onto him, feeling her startled breath wash over his collarbone. His fangs click over the beads of her earrings and barely miss the pointed curve of her ear when they close around her tight bundle of hair and tug sharply — flowing locks of the inkiest black unravel in his face, and her nails dig into his chest as she rights herself, her teeth grazing his neck. Layers of cloth fold and roll upwards, pinched between trembling fingers, revealing rivulets of desire that gleam in the fluttering candlelight; thigh muscles contract, and with a throaty gasp she sheathes herself around him, pushing down until she’s fully seated in the cradle of his hips. The warmth that envelops him is unexpected, slick, and absolute, a pulsating core of heat and wetness that draws him in, clings onto him like the darkly tarrying waters of the mineral spring.

Blazing crimson eyes look into smoldering amber, reflecting a fire wholly removed from the ambient light that dances off the walls. Then she blinks — the breathless moment shatters. She begins to rock, grinding her hips in slow circles with him clenched deeply inside her, and she moves with such vigor, such deliberation that she almost pulls noises from him but he bites them back in time, struggling to leverage himself against the taut cord that holds him. They settle into a confused, disorderly rhythm, their skin touching with maddening friction — every movement from her hits half a second slower than he anticipates, and it makes his fur stand on end, makes his toes curl, makes his hips buck into that tightness, setting their own rhythm as he moves to hurry her. The tip of her tongue pokes slyly from between her teeth, like she’s enjoying teasing him, like she thinks he’s enjoying getting teased.

The rough cadence makes her bounce, and he finds himself watching the way her face tenses and shudders, the way lithe muscles ripple underneath her smooth, manufactured flesh, smelling her sharp tang of desire, drinking in all of her — until thin fingers lock into his hair and give a harsh tug, jerking his head back and exposing his neck. “Impatient, aren’t you?” she growls, her words coming fast and disjointed between breaths. “Relax for a second, goddammit.”

She draws a path up his throat with her tongue, hard teeth leaving a smattering of spots whose discoloring he can only guess in his mind’s eye, as her hips drive downwards with force, taking him in again entirely before lifting herself up and pushing back down, over and over — and he breathes, swallows, despite himself, despite knowing full well she can feel every shiver in his throat, every leap of his Adam’s apple.

His voice comes out a lot more level than it sounds in his head, and he’s eternally thankful for his composure. “As if I would take orders from the likes of you,” he reiterates, just as her lips brush over his jawline, and her unimpressed scoff tells him she expects nothing less from him.

“Just this once, you will.”

The warmth that caresses his cheek from behind her blood-red lips leaves behind an unnatural coolness as she rises upright, her thighs gripping him tightly around the hips. She pushes down with increasing frenzy — _Who’s the impatient one?_ he wants to say, but the words won’t take form — because her slick tightness is squeezing him, swallowing him hungrily, clawing deep within him and exposing that undeniable need. His movements grow uncharacteristically hurried, slamming up against her as she slides down to meet him. He hates it, hates that she’s making him this way — and most of all, he hates knowing full well how thick of a lie that is — but the rhythm is quickening still, and he’s lost track of who’s setting the pace. It seems that control has barely edged within his grasp when she’s wrested it from him again, and in his weakened state and the rope that digs maddeningly into his wrist, it’s cumbersome to push her off, or maybe he doesn’t want to.

The thought is an uncomfortable one, if only because it might hold some truth to it, and he can only dismiss it for so long. He tries to focus on the cadence of their movements, so rough and yet so slick around the edges, the messy, volatile gratification as they repeatedly fall in and out of rhythm with each other, like an aggravating, flaming itch that his claws search for blindly.

It’s getting easier to not think at all, admittedly, with the moment so filled with carnal sensations: the steel hold she keeps relentlessly latched where his stripes curve around his hips, the hot breaths she grunts out with every meeting of their bodies, and he can tell when he’s hit that shivering bundle of nerves inside her, the way she shudders against him and around him, the way her voice echoes off the walls, the way her fingernails dig into his skin, the way her lips part, her eyelashes flicker. He keeps his eyes oriented resolutely on her face, watching her move faster, faster, with the rhythm that settles so discordantly between them, because all his nose can tell him is _Naraku_ , and the rest of him fights hard to push _Kagura_.

But that reprehensible smell of Naraku — he realizes, swallowing thickly — maybe it’s just enough —

Because the heat in his abdomen is coiling in spasms and stirring up a violent storm, and with her closing like a vice around him, it doesn’t take much more for the overwhelming pressure to explode over the point of no return, all of it squirming, writhing, leaping irreversibly free from his control, cramping furiously, almost uncomfortably, and sweeping him up in a rushing torrent; the back of his head presses hard against the ground and surely the sigh that rolls from her lips carries his name on its edges, but it’s quiet enough that he can pretend he didn’t hear.

The descent from that inscrutably dizzying peak is a messy one; the air in the cavern smells musky, thick, an indisputable reminder of what they’ve done, and it settles on his skin like a dense layer of silt. His legs ache, his intestines churn, his breaths pass in and out of his lungs in slowing measures. Chest heaving, Kagura leans in, closes the distance between their mouths again, and for that second, Sesshoumaru lets his voice slip from his throat in a low sigh.


End file.
